post-Thanksgiving bullet points…

Shopping on Black Friday … Well, Sort Of
Yesterday evening, Sara and I went out to peruse some of the bigger stores to see if they still had anything worth picking up at low, low prices. You’d never catch me up at 4am sitting in line anywhere, but I don’t mind cruising around later to see what DVDs I can pick up for $5 each. It wasn’t nearly as good of a take as last year – I ended up with about 8 or 9 titles, and a couple that I had my eye out for were already sold out, but apparently the word on the street in general was that the sales just weren’t comparable to what we saw last year. Which is weird, seeing that even though you didn’t have any new consoles this year, the Wii is still impossible to get, plus there seems to be a lot of push for Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band. Disney also had some good DVDs out recently, so I don’t understand why there weren’t better sales, but whatever. We ultimately ended up hitting K-Mart (although I don’t know why), Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy before heading home to watch a movie and enjoy some pie.

Wii … Needs to be Cheaper!
So I hadn’t really given it much thought until Sara put the idea in my head, but now it looks like we’re going to have to get a Wii eventually. I’ll admit that I was a bit reluctant because it looks an awful lot like exercise and I’m not exactly nostalgic for that, but after going through some of the games – Mario, Zelda, some of the carnival and olympic games – it looks like it could be kinda neat. Unfortunately, given our current financial status after moving and getting ready for the wedding and Sara starting school again next year, we just don’t have the $250+ it’d cost to pick up a system and a game or three for Christmas this year. At this point, though, we’re kinda hoping that if we can hold out until next Christmas, not only will it be cheaper and allow us to get more than just one game when we buy it, but maybe we’ll even have a little wedding gift money to pay for it!

Go, Go, Recycling!
I’m very happy to announce that today was our first official recycling pick-up day. Now it might not sound like a big deal to most, but I haven’t really been able to recycle since I moved down here because every apartment complex that I’ve lived did absolutely nothing to encourage or even allow residents to recycle. I did finally start bundling up my newspapers and driving them to a collection site myself, but it’s such a pain compared to having curbside pick-up like we had up north. But now that’s all behind us – this morning, our garbage man picked up two bags of trash and one bag of recyclables, which I think it a pretty good effort! Anything to help do my part…

Preparing to Light Up the Night
So I’m finally allowed to start putting up Christmas lights!!! I’ve spent some time conceptualizing what it is that I want to do, trying to figure out just how I can make the coolest presentation without bankrupting us at the same time. I’ve got something in mind now and I don’t think I’ll have to buy too many new sets for it, so I’m pretty much heading out to the store just as soon as this is posted!

Thanksgiving Disney?
And last but certainly not least, I’m pretty sure that we’re going over to one of the parks tomorrow, as long as I can at least get one or two more writing things done tonight so I don’t feel like I completely wasted my entire 4-day weekend! I’m kinda feeling Animal Kingdom this time, as we really don’t go there too much except when we’re staying overnight and can just pop in for Everest and then hop a bus over to another park, but I’m curious to see what they do for the holidays as far as decorating. There’s also a chance that we might get to eat at the new Yak & Yeti restaurant that opened recently over by Expedition: Everest before it starts taking reservations and the dining plan makes it impossible for us to get in on a whim.

Sometimes I think that the Animal Kingdom gets a bad rap because it’s an amazingly designed park – it’s just also very different from the Magic Kingdom or Epcot or MGM and I think when people have limited time, they’d rather do lots and lots of attractions. But you simply can’t argue that the attention to detail there is second to none – Joe Rohde and his team did an impeccible job when it came to recreating some of the great pride lands of the world on 500 acres of swampland in Central Florida! It’s too bad that Disney is probably done dumping money into that park for a while now – it’d been cool to see some of the other developments that could help turn it into a full-fledged 8am-9pm operating park like the others. Oh well, it’ll get there eventually…

Now off to Target!

Thanksgiving Dinner

Yesterday was a good Thanksgiving, albeit short and quiet. We both slept in, then Sara got up to play video games and I tried to get in a little writing after sleeping a bit longer. We ended up doing a mostly store-bought Thanksgiving dinner simply because Sara had to go to work in the evening and neither of us really felt like spending much time in the kitchen cooking. Plus, it was just the two of us, so no need to go to too much trouble…

Thanksgiving 2007 Roll Call…
HoneyBaked Ham smoked turkey breast (still some of the best turkey I’ve ever had!)
Stovetop stuffing
Country Crock garlic mashed potatoes
Country Crock sweet potatoes
Country Crock macaroni & cheese (apparently the south is rubbing off on us…)
gravy straight from the jar
Del Monte canned corn
broccoli rice casserole (except I ruined the recipe by trying to substitute Cream of Mushroom soup with Cream of Mushroom soup with Garlic and it was horrible!)
King Hawaiian sweet bread
HoneyBaked Ham pumpkin cinnamon pie (with genuine Cool Whip, of course)
Mrs. Smith’s Cinnabon apple crumb pie (awesome!)
and again, plenty of wine to go around… 🙂


a little sample of everything…


…and of course, it ain’t Thanksgiving until the pumpkin pie is served!

All in all, a very happy Thanksgiving, indeed.

Hey, look – a blog post!

Will the Unpacking EVER End?!
That was supposed to be a primary goal this weekend, but we sorta fell short by … well, a lot. We’re still making progress – the home theater is now setup and the kitchen is almost finished except for a few pictures to hang – but I just want it to be DONE with no half-empty boxes lying around so that I can try to focus on doing something else for a change!

Light Up the Night!
Something else like start setting up Christmas lights!!! I haven’t really been able to decorate since I moved down here four years ago because I’ve always lived in apartment complexes, so I’m really looking forward to being able to put lights up on the house this year. I’ve got to take it somewhat easy, as I used to spend ridiculous amounts of money on lights when decorating Mom’s house and we don’t have the money to blow hundreds of dollars this year, but I think I can still make it look nice without going too overboard! I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to start decorating until after Thanksgiving, so the countdown officially begins…

The Great Ant Invasion of 2007
Yeah, we’re at it again. We moved out of one ant-ridden home and right into another! It’s calmed down considerably since we first moved in – literally, there were dead flies everywhere when we took possession of the home, not to mention the fact that it wasn’t at all uncommon to find little millipedes roaming our carpet throughout the house. The latest pest has been ants – both little fire ants, but worse are these huge, red ants roughly the size of Buicks, but much more menacing. We spent part of yesterday afternoon spraying around the house and also dumping some ant-killer-stuff on as many hills as we could find, so in retalliation they attempted to lay siege to our kitchen last night. Fortunately we returned home just in time to properly fortify and defend our food preparation area, but ultimately this could be a long and devastating war with many casualties…

Operation: Dinner and a Movie
Last night we finally had to get out of the house, so we went into town to have dinner at Bahama Breeze because I had a gift certificate to use up, and it was actually pretty good. I ended up getting some sort of caribbean chicken with an awesome side of sweet potatoes, and despite the noise, I think I’d go back. Afterwards, we took a cruise through my old neck of the woods to pick up birthday cards at Wal-Mart, then went to see Martian Child at the theater … very good movie! The movie instantly had three things that never fail to appeal to me – John Cusack, the main character was a struggling writer, and themes of space. It was a bit sad at some points, but overall I thought quite intellectual and quite good.

On the ride home, we retardedly drove with the top down (in November … cold!) in hopes of seeing part of the meteor shower, but it turns out we were off by a day. Too bad, because that would’ve been really cool to see and Sara’s never seen one. Next time, though…

luckiest man alive

Yesterday was a really long day at work. Not insanely hard, mind you, but very long and tedious … probably the first time I’ve worked any amount of overtime in weeks. So needless to say, I didn’t have time to do anything that I wanted to do when I finally walked out the door just before 11:00pm – Supercuts was long closed, I wasn’t about to commit an hour of my time to picking up four things at Wal-Mart, and it was going to be too late to do any housework by the time I actually got home (damn commute!)…

But when I did finally arrive home, the stress just sorta disappeared as Sara ushered me into the bathroom to find the bubble bath that she’d prepared for me, complete with candles and a very full glass of wine that didn’t last nearly as long as it normally would with me! The timing couldn’t have been more impeccible. We chatted until the water was almost cold and the stress just seemed to melt away. What can I say … I’m a lucky guy…

a Floridian bloodbath…

A little post-Halloween fun for y’all – I was all ready to do a little blogging last night while Sara was bathing, but when I came in to find the tub looking a little something like this, that pretty much put the cabash on those plans!

And although blood was the first thing that came to my mind last night, right out of your favorite Halloween horror flick, looking back now the first thing I hear in my head when I see this pick is, “Oh yeah!!!” Thankfully no brick walls were harmed during this visit from the Kool-Aid man…

(P.S. For those curious, the coloring is actually from a “bath bomb” that Sara picked up at one of those fancy bath & body stores. The last one made the water look like pee, this one blood – either we’ve mistakenly been shopping from their Bodily Fluids Collection or they need to go back to the drawing board with their dyes!)